Meeting Mario Batali (Where Does He Eat?)

We throw the term “celebrity chef” around a lot, but I’m switching to plain old “celebrity” for Mario Batali. He barely made it out of the elevator at the Inn at the Market earlier this week without fans coming to say how they admired his food, and it was rare that 60 seconds passed in the quiet courtyard without someone tentatively approaching to ask for an autograph or say thanks.

Batali was easygoing and laid-back throughout. Why not? His fans are nice people, he said, not weirdos — and at his restaurants they’d be hugging him, not shaking hands.

When we met he was running on the fumes of one-third of a porchetta sandwich that he grabbed at Salumi earlier in the day, waiting for dad Armandino to pick him up for a family dinner at Elliott’s Oyster House. No molecular gastronomy for him — in Seattle, “I like places with 20 oysters and four kinds of salmon.” That includes the likes of Elliott’s and Steelhead Diner and Etta’s — places that are “easy to love.” And, it goes without saying that he’s a fan of Salumi. “I knew Dad was going to do something (with food). I didn’t know he was going to become a national icon.”

Batali has a restaurant empire on the East Coast, and I told him I’d been struck by the recent changes in Seattle’s restaurant scene, how a few years back only Tom Douglas could claim the emperor’s title, but others are finally taking the plunge. I asked what made Batali go ahead with more than one place of his own. His response was remarkably similar to what Ethan Stowell said when Stowell opened Tavolata — that he had great chefs under him who needed an opportunity to move up, and he didn’t want to lose them to another chef or another city.

“What happens is, you grow, and all of a sudden you have all these people ready for a great challenge,” Batali said. He added that he hopes Seattle chefs are also sharing equity in the new ventures with those chefs. One of the most important things he’s learned over the years, he said: “You don’t need to make all the money.”

Batali was mainly in town promoting his latest book, Italian Grill, getting props for recipes that range from herb-rubbed T-bone to grilled radicchio to a recipe for homemade ricotta to serve over grilled bread. To Batali, it was a chance to collect “what I really make at my home, all summer.” The mussels he’s grabbing bare-handed from the piastra in the cover shot really are being cooked on the 41-inch Viking grill at his summer home, the sweetie-pie kids in the food photos are his own sons, Leo and Benno. (“Do they cook?” I asked. Oh, yeah — with recipes, without recipes — and, Batali swears, when he was back in New York for stretches of time last summer, assuming his wife was cooking every night, she was having the boys do Iron Chef competitions to see who could make the best dinner.)

So where does Batali stand on gas vs. charcoal? The book’s recipes, surprisingly, neutrally, all give the option of either.

“I don’t mind gas. Gas works,” Batali said. The ingredients and the recipe are what matter here. “I don’t want people to obsess about the wrong thing — which is going out and buying the 41-inch Viking.”

Batali’s own favorites in the book include the mussels (recipe below), the fresh rabiola wrapped in mortadella, and a spit-roasted duck with orange and rosemary. The two that have grabbed my interest the most so far, though, are a pizza crust recipe that includes white wine (he credits the daughter of an Italian colleague for the tip) and roasted corn “as Italians would eat it”, the point being, Italians don’t eat corn this way, but, if they did, they might do it like this — rolled in olive oil and vinegar, dredged in Parmigiano, and sprinkled with fresh mint and hot red pepper. I had to ask if he gets heat for departing from pure Italian food. He said no — at least not any more now than ever. He thinks he cooks “in a way Italians understand,” whether it’s traditional or not.

I also couldn’t resist asking about his feelings toward what I think is one of the best food books ever, Bill Buford’s Heat, which started off as a profile of Batali. In 30 years, Batali knows he’ll feel honored by it. But it’s the last time he’ll give a writer complete access to his life. Reading the book in the end felt as though he was standing in a room full of mirrors, he said. Up on a pedestal. Naked.

During the reporting, “I wasn’t really paying attention, thinking ‘Oh man, he’s writing everything down’,” Batali said. And it’s amazing how different what you’re saying sounds when it’s drawn out on the page.

Batali’s a native of Federal Way, and I was cheered to hear him say how much good food he enjoys in our region. “It’s a great time to be in the Pacific Northwest,” he said. We have great restaurants, great markets, people doing great things with all sorts of food. (Our cheeses, for one — “Wherever there’s a good wine culture, there’s a good cheese culture,” he said.) So why, I asked, do Seattleites have such an inferiority complex when it comes to our food? He says it’s a function of our lousy roads and terrible drivers. ( I know. This, from a New Yorker?)

Next step for Batali is the airing this fall of the Spain-based PBS food show he made with the bizarrely dream-sequence-like combination of Mark Bittman and Gwyneth Paltrow. (Can’t you picture waking up, blinking, saying ‘I had the weirdest dream … that Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Gwyneth Paltrow and I all went on a road trip to Spain!) It’s not as strange as it sounds, Batali said. He knew he could work well with Bittman, and Paltrow is an old customer and friend who told him at a dinner party she’d like to be involved. And talk about celebrity? When they’re in Europe, it’s all reflected toward her, not him.

Want to gain your own Mario-related fame and spend some of your own time with the man himself? Enter his grilling contest. Details here.

Preheat a gas grill or prepare a fire in a charcoal grill. Place a piastra on the grill to preheat at least 15 minutes.

Put the mussels in a large metal bowl, add orange and lemon zest and juice and the jalapeno, and toss gently. (If you don’t have a metal bowl, toss in any large bowl, then use an upside-down roasting pan to cover the mussels when you cook them.) Set aside.

Place bread crumbs, prosciutto, lemon thyme, and scallions in a food processor and zap until well mixed, six or seven pulses.

Pour the olive oil onto the piastra (if your piastra is not large enough, cook the mussels in two batches). Working quickly, dump the mussels (with everything else in the bowl) onto the piastra, scatter the breadcrumb mixture over and around them, and cover with the inverted bowl. Remove the bowl after two minute and gently stir mussels around. Continue cooking, uncovered, for about 3 minutes longer, until they all open; transfer mussels to a platter as they open (discard any that do not open). Scrape up any breadcrumb mixture remaining on the piastra, scatter it over the mussels, and serve immediately.